Opéra Comique

“ One reason for the gradual approximation of the opéra comique to the drame lyrique and grand opera, quite aside from the influence of romanticism, lay in the appearance of the opéra bouffe, representing parody, not sentiment. For if the opéra comique and drame lyrique of the first three quarters of the nineteenth century represented the advance of artistic taste and the preference of the musically educated for the essentially romantic rather than the merely entertaining ”

“ Entertainment in the evening is not difficult, for many of the big theatres and both the Opera and Opera Comique are still running. Anderson, my roommate on the Espagne, who is now at Neuilly, and I have gone three times already to the Opera, where we saw Manon and L'Etranger. ”

“ Recitation is too tame, pantomime too silent, scenic art too illusive, costume too familiar, music too unpicturesque; but all these combined are, at once, as romantic, exciting, impressive, and melo-dramatic as the varied aptitudes, the exacting taste, and the broad, experimental genius of the age. The gifts of nature, the resources of art, the gratification of the senses, the exigencies of fashion and taste, and the wants of the heart and imagination find in the Opera a most convenient luxury. The lyrical drama has thus gradually usurped the place of tournament and theatre ”

“ Thus it happens, that if the musician has more art than the poet, he effaces him; and the actor, seeing the spectator sacrifice the words to the music, sacrifices in his turn theatrical gesture and action to song and brilliancy of voice, which transforms a dramatic entertainment into a mere concert....
"Such are the defects which the absolute perfection of music, and its defective application to language, may introduce into the Opera. ”

“ What a grand thought is that which represents him at the theatre, mechanically performing his part, while all the time his soul is thinking of his beloved opera, so that often, unconsciously to himself, he bursts out into its weird and startling music! ”

“ The idea of having a great fugue in eight and ten parts, with a full chorus and orchestra, quite independent of the solo parts, to finish a comic opera was a stroke of genius that could only have occurred to a supreme mind, and could only have been carried out by one of the great musical and dramatic geniuses of the world. It is extraordinarily successful, and its daring is gloriously vindicated. Let those lovers of musical comedy, ragtime, and sentimental ballads who sneer at fugue, counterpoint, form, and technique hear this, and wonder. ”

“ The conclusion is drawn by the audience in general, that it is present to hear and see what is going on up on the stage; any interruption to this, whether of whispering or rattled programmes, is rudely hissed. While one who attempts to leave or to approach his seat after the first note of the overture has been sounded finds himself detained with greater force than fondness. The rare premise is entertained that opera is designed to furnish music, and that the music is worth hearing. ”

“ Our theatre merely offers the convenient locale for the tempting exhibition of the heterogeneous wares of art manufacture. How incapable is our stage to gather up each branch of art in its highest and most perfect expression—the drama—it shows at once in its division into the two opposing classes, play and opera; whereby the idealizing influence of music is forbidden to the play, and the opera is forestalled of the living heart and lofty purpose of actual drama. ”

“ They give weekly concerts in small halls, hardly bigger than an ordinary-sized room, and the handful of attendants smoke their fat porcelain pipes and extract cherries out of glasses of kirsch, and happily imagine themselves music-lovers. But the great artiste is an artist through sight rather than through sound; and even in opera, where the dramatic element is or should be subservient to the music, the superdramatic French are ill-at-ease and hampered. ”

“ We would, moreover, be spared the absurdity of watching singers with beautiful voices make themselves ridiculous by clumsy actions. As to comic opera—the music's appeal would suffer no tarnish from the merely physical fascination of the star or the chorus ... I know the thought is radical; it seems impossible to imagine a piano recital without long hair, electric fingers, or visible melancholia; opera with only the box-holders as appeals to the eye seems too good to be true; but—I assure you it would emancipate music from all that now makes it the most vicious of the arts. ”

“ For the sake of enjoying the pleasures of music and of the drama in combination, we must adopt certain conventions, and must assume that song is the natural language of the men and women that we propose to show in our operas; as we assume in tragedy that they all talk in verse, in comedy that they are all witty and yet are perpetually giving one another opportunities for repartee; in the ballet that they all dance and are unable to speak at all. ”

“ Don’t you think intelligent people are beginning to get just a trifle sick of burlesque, and spectacle, and sensation, and melodrama?’
‘Why, my dear sir,’ the manager answered promptly, ‘that’s the exact chance on which I’m calculating when I venture to accept your comic opera from an unknown beginner. It’s clever, there’s no denying that, and I hope the fact won’t be allowed to tell against it: but the music’s bright and lively ”

“ Operas which are both beautiful and reasonable do exist, and one or two of them are actually in our present-day repertoire. The questions we have to ask are these: Can a highly imaginative and significant drama, in which action and reflection hold a proper balance, in which some great and moving passion or some elemental human motives find true dramatic expression—can such a drama exist as opera? Is it possible to preserve the body and the spirit of drama and at the same time to preserve the body and spirit of music? ”

“ The decline of comic opera commenced with the ascendency of the English 'musical comedy.' There are, it is true, many works of the latter order that contain pages of music far better than what is to be found in many of the more strictly operatic works. ”

“ Under the accepted operatic form, however, it has relative truth, as the main musical purpose of opera seems, hitherto, to have been less to furnish expression for exalted emotions and thoughts, or exquisite sentiments, than to grant the vocal virtuoso opportunity to display phenomenal qualities of voice and execution. But all opera, however it may stray from the fundamental idea, suggests this dramatic element in music, just as mere lyricism in the poetic art is the blossom from which is unfolded the full-blown perfection of the word-drama, the highest form of all poetry. ”

“ The peculiar, gnawing feeling that oppressed me in conducting our ordinary opera, was often interrupted by an indescribable enthusiastic feeling of happiness, when here and there, in the performance of nobler works, I became thoroughly conscious, in the midst of the representation, of the incomparable influence of dramatic-musical combinations—an influence of such depth, fervor and life, as no other art is capable of producing. ”

“ If the opera succeeds it will be because a larger public has discovered that the music which has been consorted with the old pictures, actions, and words has added to them an element either of charm or expressive potentiality hitherto felt to be lacking. Is that true? Has a rock of offense been removed? Has a mephitic odor been changed to a sweet savor by the subtle alchemy of the musical composer? Has a drama abhorrent, bestial, repellent, and loathsome been changed into a thing of delectability by the potent agency of music? ”

“ His opera, then, is no longer a congeries of separate musical numbers, like duets, arias, chorals, and finales, set in a flimsy web of formless recitative, without reference to dramatic economy. His great purpose is lofty dramatic truth, and to this end he sacrifices the whole framework of accepted musical forms, with the exception of the chorus, and this he remodels. The musical energy is concentrated in the dialogue as the main factor of the dramatic problem, and fashioned entirely according to the requirements of the action. ”

“ Up to this time the Opera had been constituted as it alone could be; for what better use, at the theatre, could be made of a kind of music which could paint nothing than by employing it in the representation of things which could not exist? But as soon as music learnt to paint and to speak the charms of sentiment, it brought into contempt those of the Wand; the theatre was purged of its garden of mythology, interest was substituted for astonishment; the machines of poets and of carpenters were destroyed; and the lyric drama assumed a more noble and less gigantic character. ”

“ In short, where-ever there is either the Love of Liberty or the Love of Glory, a true Poet may well be admir’d, and in how wretched a condition must the Nation be where both those Qualities are wanting. From what has been said ’tis manifest that it behoves us to think, before we fully resolve upon banishing so useful an Entertainment as that of the Drama, for the pernicious Amusement of Opera’s. ”

“ This anarchy of the arts, where music, dancing, and decoration endeavour to surpass each other by the most profuse display of dazzling charms, constitutes the very essence of the Opera. What sort of opera music would it be, where the words should receive a mere rhythmical accompaniment of the simplest modulations? The fantastic magic of the Opera consists altogether in the luxurious competition of the different means, and in the perplexity of an overflowing superfluity. ”

“ We must conclude from this that, in regard to dramatic singing, many opera-goers are still a good deal like the honest Scotchman who, on his first visit to a theatre, climbed on the stage and administered the villain of the play a sound thrashing ”

“ Although music, as an imitative art, has more connection with poetry than with painting, this latter is not obliged, as poetry is, at the theatre, to make a double representation of the same object; because the one expresses the sentiments of men, and the other gives pictures merely of the places where they are, which strengthens much the illusion of the whole spectacle.... But it must be acknowledged that the task of the musician is greater than that of the painter. ”

“ An audience which assembles in a fair mood is satisfied as soon as it distinctly understands what is going forward, and it is a great mistake to think that a theatrical audience must have a special knowledge of music in order to receive the right impression of a musical drama. To this entirely erroneous opinion we have been brought by the fact that in opera music has wrongly been made the aim,—while the drama was merely a means for the display of the music. ”

“ You would be delighted with the Opera. Such singers and such an ensemble we do not have." "The admirable Opera is a great treat for me, especially the chorus and orchestra. Of such things we have no conception in Leipsic. The ballet would also amuse you." "A more encouraging public it would be difficult to find anywhere; it is really too encouraging—in the theatre one hears more applause than music. ”

“ A handbook would give us these minor details in an hour's reading; but we prefer to sit vacuously making feeble jokes about the singers or the occupants of the neighboring boxes, without a single intelligent thought as to why the composer attempted to write precisely this sort of an opera, when he did it, or how far he succeeded. We are content to take our opinions and criticisms ready made, no matter from whose mouth they fall; and one hears everywhere phrases that, once let loose from the Pandora's Box of some foolish brain, never cease from troubling. ”

“ The répertoire necessary for a singer may be divided into two sections, Opera and Concert. The latter includes Oratorio and Cantata.
In spoken Drama, a performer may begin his career by playing the youthful lovers, and end it by impersonating the heavy fathers. He may first sigh as Romeo, and later storm as Capulet. Not so in Opera, or lyric Drama, where the line of work to be followed is determined at the outset by the type of voice possessed by the aspirant, and which line (or emploi, as it is termed) he follows of necessity to the end of his professional career. ”

“ But for a composer opera has some irresistible attraction; it alone offers him the means of getting into touch with the great public. My Manfred will be played once or twice, and then disappear; with the exception of a few people who attend symphony concerts, no one will hear it. Opera, on the contrary—and opera alone—brings us nearer to our fellows, inoculates the public with our music, and makes it the possession, not only of a small circle, but—under favourable circumstances—of the whole nation. ”

“ After a novel progression of harmony—where the chord of the dominant seventh of E major, breathed, as it were, pianissimo by the clarionets and bassoons alone, succeeds the chord of the dominant of C minor given fortissimo by the whole orchestra—the Allegro commences. A graceful, light theme, in contrast with the significant romantic introduction, gives notice that we are to expect a comic opera, in which the marvellous and fantastic spirit of a fairy-tale is blended with the humorous. ”

“ If this freedom is so helpful, indeed so necessary, to reach one's highest power in singing, it is absolutely essential on the operatic stage. With it we should have less of the wooden motion so common to singers in opera. When one is free, physically free, the music seems to draw out the acting. With a great composer and an interpreter free to respond, the music and the body of the actor are one in their power of expressing the emotions. ”